In 2024, one of the trends in the technology industry will undoubtedly be the improvement ofHumanoid RobotLast year, the participation of technology giants such as Tesla, Apptronik and Figure made this field increasingly hot. Among them, Agility cooperated with Amazon to promote the warehouse pilot project, which pushed the competition to a climax.
Amid this excitement, one company called 1X has been surprisingly little-known. This is especially surprising since the Norwegian company made a splash in April when it joined the discussion with a $23.5 million funding round, in which the identities of the investors seemed to matter more than the amount of money raised.
Among them, Huya Global's participation attracted much attention, but what really caused a sensation wasOpenAI——The leader of this round of financing. This is not surprising considering the role OpenAI has played in the field of generative artificial intelligence in the past year. The underlying technology of generative AI will undoubtedly play a huge role in shaping the future of robotics, and OpenAI has clearly placed a big bet in this race.
Image credit: 1X
This week, 1X announced that it had successfully completed a $100 million Series B round of financing, almost quadrupling its previous already considerable financing amount. However, it is worth noting that in this round of financing, OpenAI is no longer at the top of the list, but has been replaced by EQT Ventures. So far, 1X's total financing has reached an enviable $125 million.
1X's core product, NEO, is a humanoid robot. In appearance and function, NEO is quite similar to some competing products on the market, and its goal is to solve the problem of global labor shortage. The company believes that humanoid robots are the ideal form for navigating environments designed by humans for humans. Although this view seems reasonable on the surface, there are also many criticisms. Some people think that such a system is too complicated, while others believe that true general functionality is still far from being achieved.
Despite the skepticism, the application of generative AI may be the key to solving these problems, and 1X is a pioneer in this area.
As for the purpose of this huge amount of funds, the CEO of 1X said that this is the company’sFirstIn the tech world, this people-first attitude is not only rare, it’s commendable.